Media Centre

Thank you for that introduction.

I want to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet – the Eora people.

It’s a pleasure to be here at the Workplace Research Centre – whose research plays such an important part in helping Australians understand workplace relations and whose research prior to the last election provided such an accurate picture of the impact of Work Choices and in particular Australian Workplace Agreements

It’s been a while, I know, since a federal government workplace relace relations minister said anything nice about John Buchanan or the WRC.

My immediate predecessor Joe Hockey rather infamously branded the W.R.C as:

Given the Liberal Government’s track record on Higher Education, the difficulty here is we don’t know which Joe Hockey’s thought was the bigger insult- be branded an union official or an academic.

This animosity between the previous government and the WRC can be summed up just 3 words: ‘shooting the messenger’.

Because when it came to WorkChoices and AWAs the Howard Government didn’t want Australians to hear the truth – which was that they were a disaster for employees and employers alike.

In fact, that message didn’t just come from the WRC but the Howard Government’s own research.

We now know that the previous government was sitting on masses of data it had to suppress because it proved that the critics of WorkChoices were right. For instance, from data obtained from the Workplace Authority we now know that:

• 70 per cent of AWAs removed shift work loadings;
• 68 per cent removed annual leave loadings;
• 65 per cent removed penalty rates;
• 49 per cent removed overtime loadings; and
• 25 per cent removed declared public holidays.

The list goes on. They were all things the Government said would be protected by law but weren’t.

In fact during the short life of WorkChoices the only reliable information that came out about it was provided by non-government organisations, including the work of many people in this room.

This lack of transparency of evidence typified the Howard Government’s whole approach to workplace relations.

While that government increased the rate of workplace relations change, it reduced the amount of data collection to evaluate the effects of change and make the case for further change.

• It ended regular surveys.
• Hoarded what data it did collect.
• And denounced what little independent data managed to make its way into the public arena.

And it all ended predictably in the absurd sight of Joe Hockey telling the ABC’s Four Corners in February that when he took over the job, his ministerial colleagues weren’t aware that people could be worse off under WorkChoices and could actually have conditions taken away without compensation.

In fact they were so determined to introduce WorkChoices they forgot to even listen to their pollsters – and ended up having to hear the message loud and clear on election night.

What our whole policy platform, not just our workplace relations system, insists on is an evidence-based approach to decision making.

Our economy and society as well as our workplaces are entering a period of quite momentous change.

It’s worth reflecting on the scope and scale of that change for just a moment.

• We have the rise of nations like China and India, taking globalisation to more than 2 billion new people – providing new competition and new markets.
• We have ongoing advances in information and communications technologies that are affecting the way almost every job is done, breaking down national barriers and time zones for doing business.
• Continuing long-term trends like the entry of more women into the workforce and the ageing of the population are increasing the need to make our workplaces far more flexible and family friendly – as experts like Barbara Pocock, Anne Manne and others have pointed out.
• The need to become more environmentally sustainable is changing the products we create and leading us to review how we make, deliver, consume and recycle them. Debates about this are now becoming the stuff of daily political discussion – as we’re seeing with the example of hybrid technology car production. This debate will touch every industry eventually.
• And, of course, the rising importance of human capital to economic activity is slowly altering the way goods and services are produced and the relationships between employers and employees.

This is epoch-defining change – similar in scale and scope to the industrial revolution.

Whether we call it the human capital age, the information age, the globalisation age or the age of global warming – it is big and is transforming our world and our workplaces.

But we know surprisingly little about it.

In fact, we collect less data about the transformation of our workplaces than we do about the AFL’s interchange system.

Coaches keep more and better statistics on their forward line than we do on the way we produce the very goods and services that maintain our national prosperity.

This needs to be improved. We need more and better quality workplace data, not less.

When it comes to workplace relations reform, the Rudd Government is committed to improving information gathering and basing our policy decisions on hard evidence, not ideology.

In May 2006 Peter McIlwain, the head of the Office of Workplace Services gave evidence to a Senate Estimates Committee about what had happened to important award protections in AWAs under the former Government’s Work Choices reforms.

That evidence showed the extent to which key entitlements were being stripped from Australian workers under AWAs. However following the uproar about what was happening the OWS stopped conducting that analysis and at the next Senate Estimates hearing there was no updated data.

Requests for the data were denied.
This was unacceptable then and it is unacceptable now.

We don’t need a Government that can’t handle the truth and which attacks those providing feedback to it.

We need positive collaboration between Government and non-government entities like universities, unions and employer groups.

My Department has an extensive programme for the coming year to improve and extend its Workplace Agreements Database. This will provide additional opportunities to expand both its internal and publicly released reporting frameworks. The project will broaden the range of information that we code from collective agreements which will enhance the range of data available for analysis.

In addition, we will be making available data that will allow researchers, like those at the WRC, to analyse AWAs. For example to compare the content of AWAs to the provisions of relevant awards. This will include making available on request 1000 AWAs which were lodged with the Workplace Authority and assessed against the Fairness Test. This represents 1 in 300 agreements. The Workplace Authority will provide these on a CD Rom on request and ensure all personal information is removed from the agreements before they are distributed.

The Government has already made a big start in addressing the sorts of huge changes I’ve just mentioned that are taking place in our workplaces.

The human capital agenda is one of our biggest reform themes. And the recent Budget contained big investments in education and skills, including:

• $19.3 billion of investment in early education, schools, vocational education and higher education;
• 630,000 new training places;
• The establishment of Skills Australia; and
• Increased funding for Industry Skills Councils.

The creation of 38 new child care centres combined with our increase of the Child Care Tax Rebate from 30 to 50 percent will make it easier for more women to return to the workforce. And our Fresh Ideas for Work and Family program will help small businesses implement practices to help their employees balance their work and family obligations.

New national funds to encourage innovation in renewable energy, clean coal, green cars and clean businesses will speed up the greening of our industries and workplaces.

The thing that brings all of these economic and workplace changes together is our workplace relations system.

As a nation we can make massive investments in the knowledge, skills, ICT capacities, gender balance and environmental capabilities of our workforce – but unless we also have a good workplace relations system, we won’t maximise the benefits to the economy.

This is what we’re doing with our workplace relations reforms.

Our reforms will make our workplaces fairer because they will ensure Australian employees are protected by minimum standards that cannot be stripped away.

Our reforms will also make our workplaces more productive because they return the emphasis to enterprise bargaining, trust and cooperation – which we know from numerous studies are the keys to improving productivity.

As you know, we’ve made the first elements of this change into law already through the passing of the transition legislation in March.

Consultation is now proceeding over the next phase of our reforms – including through the Australian Industrial Relations Commission’s creation of new modern awards and on matters like the processes and powers of the new industrial umpire, Fair Work Australia through the Business Advisory Group and Workers Advisory Group.

As part of this consultation and decision-making process, earlier this week I released further details of our safety net – through the release of our final 10 National Employment Standards that will take effect from 1 January 2010.

The National Employment Standards are based on a comprehensive consultation process that brought in 129 submissions from a range of organisations and individuals.

The National Employment Standards will be the bedrock of our new workplace relations system and will apply to all employers and employees within the federal system.

They will they protect minimum conditions such as:

• Maximum Weekly Hours;
• Annual Leave;
• Long Service Leave;
• Public Holidays; and
• Notice of Termination and Redundancy Pay

But they will also provide the basis for the creation of the sorts of flexible, family-friendly workplaces that employees, employers and our economy all need.

For instance:

• Parents will have the right to request a change flexible work arrangements for the purposes of caring for their child until the child reaches school age.
• Each parent will have the right to 12 months’ unpaid parental leave when a new child is born or adopted. The National Employment Standards allow parents to sequence their leave. Alternatively one parent can request up to an additional 12 month’s leave. This means there will be a parent at home for the first 2 years of their child’s life.

There is more consultation to take place before we can settle our workplace relations system in new legislation.

One thing you can be sure of is that the changes will be sensible, will be considered in the light of feedback from employers and their representatives and employees and trade unions. Our changes will reflect the values of the Australian people.

To do this – in workplace relations but also in every area of economic and social reform – we are going to need a stronger approach to information collection and analysis.

It will be a cooperative challenge involving the Government and our many university and non-government research organisations. We look forward to your involvement.

Thank you.